Catalina Eddy
A Novel in Three Decades
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
"Daniel Pyne flips all the standards upside-down with Catalina Eddy and in the process delivers a classic California noir — times three. This is Pyne’s masterpiece. I guarantee no reader will go wanting.”
–Michael Connelly
Times may change, but crimes never do, and neither do the people who investigate them. A collection of three loosely connected crime novellas, each set in a distinct era, Catalina Eddy is a gritty, hard-boiled exploration into the immutable police underworld of Southern California. In The Big Empty, an obstinate Los Angeles detective investigates the murder of his estranged wife while fears of nuclear war and Communism grip the nation; in Losertown, a mid-career attorney in San Diego chases down a legendary drug kingpin but chafes against the Reagan Revolution policies of his new boss; and in Portuguese Bend, set in the present day, an undercover cop is paralyzed in a gunfight but determined to solve what may be her last case as a police officer in Long Beach. They are all, in one way or another, stuck in dreary endless loops of love, murder, and the quest for clarity, release, and redemption.
Reminiscent of James Ellroy’s grittiness and Raymond Chandler’s dark wit, Catalina Eddy is Daniel Pyne’s clever homage to—and skillful deconstruction of—traditional noir storytelling. Moody, enthralling, and keenly imagined, Catalina Eddy evokes the characters and ambiance of a singular, peculiar landscape with cinematic flair.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Three loosely connected novellas, each focused on a homicide case, make up this gritty, darkly witty, and often bitter California noir from Pyne (Fifty Mice). In "The Big Empty," set in Hollywood in June 1954, PI Rylan Lovely, an Army vet, investigates the murder of the ex-wife who betrayed him with his blind best friend; along the way, Lovely rescues a child, Gilbert Kirby. In "Losertown," set in San Diego in June 1987, Kirby, now an assistant U.S. attorney, is trapped between a politically appointed boss, Sabrina Colter, "somebody's kid sister crossed with a poisonous snake," and his lover, FBI agent Tina Z, as they attempt to trap a drug lord. Kirby never knows that he's the father of Tina's Marine daughter, Willa, who's arrested for killing her husband in "Portuguese Bend," set in Long Beach in June 2016. Paralyzed homicide detective Riley McCluggage and freelance photographer Finn Miller try to crack the case. Pyne's wounded characters walk their mean streets honorably in this compelling account of attempts to find sense in a senseless world.
